1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of wireless communications, and in particular, to a high bandwidth, dual-band system that assesses communication performance to provide high availability.
2. Statement of the Problem
Wireless communication systems use various frequency spectra to transfer wireless communication signals. Microwave systems use spectrum between one gigahertz (GHz) and 30 GHz where one GHz equals one billion cycles per second. Free-space optical systems use spectrum above 10 THz where one THz equals one trillion cycles per second.
Weather events adversely affect wireless systems transmitting above 10 GHz. To address the weather problem, free-space optical systems have been combined with weather-resilient microwave systems transmitting at 2.4 GHz. Upon failure of the free-space optical system due to a weather event, the microwave system is used to transfer traffic formerly carried by the free-space optical system. Since the microwave system does not have the capacity to transfer all of this traffic, the traffic must be prioritized, so the higher priority traffic can be transferred while the lower priority traffic is stored for subsequent transmission. Thus, the transfer of the lower priority traffic is delayed, and if there is not enough storage, portions of the lower priority traffic may be lost altogether.